


Mad Science/Sad Science

by CorpseBrigadier



Category: Original Work
Genre: Download Available, Gen, Mad Science, Nonfiction, Role-Playing Game, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24852403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: A two stat game about the perils and pleasures of being a gentleperson of science in the nineteenth century. Based on Honey Heist by Grant Howitt.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 19
Collections: Unconventional Fanwork Exchange 2020





	1. Basic Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadaras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/gifts).



> The following is a rules set for a Honey Heist variant based on the author's deep love of nineteenth-century non-realist fiction, particularly as it pertains to the archetypal figure of the mad scientist. The first page of rules as listed in Chapter 1 is all that is required to play the game, but players and storytellers who enjoy additional randomly-determined complications (and/or just really live for the excitement of rolling dice on charts) may consult Chapters 2 and 3 to add additional details to their game. Chapter 4 contains a summary of works alluded to in this piece that may be of use to players interested in the optional "literary reference" rules.
> 
> A basic character sheet is available for download [here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyk7id19u21viy2/MadScienceSadScience_CharacterSheet.pdf?dl=0).
> 
>  **Content Warning:** There is, in Chapter 2, an optional chart for assigning characters period-typical drug addictions; several of the texts upon which this game is based also have dark or unpleasant content (period-typical racism, misogyny, sexual violence, etc...) although this is not alluded to with this game or its mechanics.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the only thing you need to play the game! If you don't want to bother with additional doo-dads and whatsits, you can skip Chapters 2-4 and play this game with minimal add-ons.

**INTRODUCTION**

It’s the Year of Our Lord Eighteen-Something-or-Other and the Great Exhibition™ is taking place at your city of residence. You are a young gentleperson who has been educated in the gentle arts by which we might better understand and explore the manifold wonders of Our Lady Nature. You operate amongst a society of gentlefellows with similar inclinations, and at this unique moment in history, you have banded together in the name of SCIENCE to perform some feat worthy of this occasion.

Unfortunately, as it is the Year of Our Lord Eighteen-Something-or-Other, you and your fellows are also torn between the unhinged zeal you share for testing the boundaries of human innovation and the melancholy doldrums of being unrecognized geniuses in a world not quite ready for your genius. _Mad Science/Sad Science_ is a game that plays upon the great dichotomy of man: being sad and being not sad while doing very dangerous things.

* * *

**YOUR MISSION**

Roll D6 to determine your Mission Type. If you are feeling ambitious (as a scientist ought feel!) you may roll multiple times to construct a mission with multiple goals. The particulars of the mission once its character is determined will be left to the discretion of the Science Master General (akin to an ST or a DM), who will attend to the affairs of narrative craftsmanship without playing a Scientist themselves.

    1. **MONEY.** Your society has run out of funding for its important researches, and you need to obtain further capital to fund whatever devices, processes, or abominations against natural order it is that scientists work on. 
    2. **LOVE**. One or all of you are quite smitten with the same gentleperson who will be attending the celebration. You may opt to operate as a team of wingpersons attempt to bring about a union between one fellow of your company and their beloved. _Alternately_ , you may determine that you are all proponents of very free unions and know the object of your affections to be of a similar mind, such that you might woo them en masse.
    3. **FAME**. You are all yet unrecognized for your contributions to human knowledge, and this momentous occasion is an ideal time to garner the recognition you _deserve._
    4. **REVENGE.** Perhaps it is another gentleperson of science. Perhaps it is an incredulous sceptic. Perhaps it is some lout who stomped upon your collective monocles. Whomever it is, they will be in attendance at this fete and the time is ripe for retribution.
    5. **DISCOVERY.** You are all scientists! Your first and foremost aim should be the discovery of some SCIENCE!
    6. **CHAOS.** This is a very fine Exhibition, and it would be a shame if _something were to happen to it._



* * *

**YOUR CHARACTER**

Roll 2 D6 to determine your character. Re-roll however many times you wish should you be saddled with a scientist not to your liking.

**Descriptor:**

  1. Decadent
  2. Depraved
  3. Sensitive
  4. Acrimonious
  5. Eccentric
  6. Plucky



**Scientist Type / Special Skill**

  1. Physicist (Invisibility, a la Griffin from _The Invisible Man_ )
  2. Chemist (Death Gas, a la Sydney Atherton from _The Beetle_ )
  3. Alienist (Vampire Hunting, a la Jack Seward from _Dracula_ )
  4. Anatomist (Bad Parenting, a la Victor Frankenstein from _Frankenstein_ )
  5. Botanist (Biomodification, a la Giacomo Rappacinni from _Rappacini’s Daughter_ )
  6. Zoologist (Cultic Indoctrination, a la Dr. Moreau from _The Island of Dr. Moreau_ )



Once you have determined your character, you may opt to roll on additional charts (See Chapter 2) to give them a troubling personal possession or a troubling personal vice! You may--of course--forego this additional complication and enjoy your Sad/Mad Scientist sans add-ons.

* * *

**YOUR STATS**

You have two stats in this game. One is **Mad Science** and the other is **Sad Science**. They both start at a value of 3.

 **Mad Science** is used for tasks like crafting horrific automata, making volatile and/or poisonous compounds, punching in people’s hats, and laughing with maddened glee atop a building during a thunderstorm. If a task is aggressive, dynamic, or involves an explosion, **Mad Science** is the stat to use.

 **Sad Science** is used for speaking plain sense with sobering gravity, contemplating the ruinous nature of your hubris, retreating to the confines of your quarters to weep softly, or convincing somebody to join you in your lament for the limitations of man’s ambitions. If a task requires emotional intelligence, human sympathy, or introspection, **Sad Science** is the stat to use.

When you must perform an action in the course of your adventure, roll a D6. If you roll a number equal to or less than the applicable stat, the action succeeds. If it is an action that involves your character’s scientific field or special skill, roll 2 D6 and use the lower number.

**GAMEPLAY**

If you achieve one of your aims, your confidence blossoms and you become capable of further transgressions against the proper limits of discovery; you also gain **1 Mad Science.** If you fail in the course of your manifold schemes you are wracked with a case of, “the morbs” as the cool kids call them, and gain 1 **Sad Science**.

If you rack up **6 Mad Science** , you spiral into a self-destructive insanity, possibly tie somebody’s fiance(e) to a roof-top apparatus, threaten the world with ruin, and become unstable to the extent that you are removed from play. If you rack up **6 Sad Science** , you are given over to _fin de siècle_ ennui (regardless of what part of the _siècle_ you are in) and descend into an absinthe-fuelled haze, throwing yourself dramatically on a sofa from which you refuse to arise for the duration of play.

Out-of-play Mad Scientists and Sad Scientists may still appear as NPCs, either creating additional havoc within the game universe or moping about irritatingly depleting their Scientific Society’s supply of brandy, tea sandwiches, and personal sympathies. 

You may convert **1 Sad Science** to **1 Mad Science** by taking a moment to give a scientific presentation to your assembled society, explaining the particulars of some aspect of your field. (The Science Master General may offer strange and unexpected bonuses wholly of their imagining for the creative use of hastily drawn charts!) You may convert **1 Mad Science** to **1 Sad Science** by composing and reciting a melancholic poem for your fellow society members. (The Science Master General may determine to reward or punish you at their discretion depending on how bad your poem is.) 

**OPTIONAL RULES: LITERARY REFERENCES**

Numerous elements from this game are shamelessly stolen from a number of novels and novellas that form the basis for the genres this game seeks to capture. Should the players desire it, you may adopt the rule that when a player performs an action that acknowledges or replicates some element of a piece of literature connected to their character or circumstances, they may use an additional D6 in their roll and use the lowest number rolled in performing the action. (Example: Theophillus Agincourt, a noted Anatomist in the style of Victor Frankenstein, may perform an action riffing on Mary Shelley's novel, such as suffering a nervous fever to win the sympathies of his boyfriend, and it will enable him to use an additional D6 in attempting to secure success.)

Players are free to make literary reference on the basis of their own reading of the novel, on the basis of their hasty Wikipediaing of the novel, or on the basis of their faint memory of having seen the movie once.


	2. Optional: Supplemental Character Creation Charts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should players be so inclined, the following two charts (and their sub charts) may be used to imbue characters with additional complications to their lives and useful and/or hazardous inventory items for their personal use.

**UNIQUE ITEMS**

Want to give your scientist a unique inventory item to complicate the narrative of human endeavor in which they find themselves entangled? Roll 1 D6 on the chart below to obtain one:

  1. Indecipherable tome of maddened scribblings
  2. Very dangerous ancient artifact (See accompanying Chart)
  3. Scandalous novel contributing to societal decay
  4. Button that obviously does something but you don’t know what
  5. Mischievous animal companion (See accompanying Chart)
  6. Extremely nice cravat



**Dangerous Artifact Chart**

Role 1 d6. The result will determine that you are burdened with the possession of:

  1. The mummified hand of an ancient witch queen (See Bram Stoker's _The Jewel of Seven Stars_ )
  2. A strange bronze age dagger that is definitely not intertwined with some tragedy of your past incarnation or ancestor
  3. An incredibly cursed gemstone that three mystics are oathbound to restore to its rightful home (See Wilkie Collins' _The Moonstone_ )
  4. A not so cursed gemstone that nevertheless seems to vibrate at awkward times
  5. The idol that makes everything spiders
  6. A potsherd with a map to a forbidden land (See H. Rider Haggard's _She_ )



**Mischievous Animal Companion Chart**

Role 1 d6. The result will determine that you keep company with:

  1. A monkey who is forever stealing important items
  2. A parrot who is forever repeating important conversations
  3. A collection of adorable white mice you count as your own children (See Wilkie Collins' _The Woman in White_ )
  4. A cat who is obviously up to something
  5. A feisty scarab beetle that was a majestic princess in some past life (See Marie Corelli's _The Sorrows of Satan_ )
  6. Bees



* * *

**PERSONAL VICES**

Want to keep things spicy by further en-fleshing your scientist with some madness and/or sadness inducing complications? Roll 1 D6 on the chart below to imbue your gentleperson with some stain upon their character:

  1. An unmanageable number of love affairs 
  2. A deep rivalry with another scientist (Roll again on Character Chart to see who they are!)
  3. Keeping horrid secrets as regards your family’s past (See accompanying Chart)
  4. Dependence upon some wretched drug (See accompanying Chart)
  5. Poetry
  6. Terminally unjaunty hat



**Horrid Secret Chart**

Role 1 d6. The result will determine that your family is plagued by....

  1. Illegitimacy!
  2. Murder!
  3. Lunacy!
  4. Ghosts!
  5. Poets!
  6. Sceptics!



**Wretched Drug Chart** ****

Role 1 d6. The result will determine that you are given over to:

  1. Laudanum (a la Victor Frankenstein from _Frankenstein_ )
  2. Chloral Hydrate (a la Jack Seward from _Dracula_ )
  3. Strychnine (a la Griffin from _The Invisible Man_ )
  4. Cocaine (Sherlock Holmes is sort of like a scientist...)
  5. Alcohol
  6. A devilish elixir that bisects your psyche into two entities: one good and one evil! (You can figure out what novella this is a reference to on your own.)




	3. Optional: NPCs and Items for the Science Master General

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The following is a set of additional charts that the Science Master General may use to determine NPCs and Artifacts pertinent to particular scenarios.

**NPCs for the MONEY Scenario: Possible Patrons**

Roll 1 d6 on the following chart to determine the most well-moneyed individual who will be in attendance at the Great Exhibition™

  1. A Dickensian miser who is secretly one scientist's long lost relation
  2. A vaguely American-shaped object, as might be written by a nineteenth-century non-American author (See _Dracula's_ Quincey P. Morris)
  3. An ancient immortal who continually sells off their massive horde of kitch Atlantean memorabilia
  4. A confused young dandy who is doubtlessly meant to be a satire on a popular political or literary figure
  5. A doe-eyed heiress who is destined to inherit her great granduncle's haunted mines full of scientific reagents
  6. The devil himself, wandering around dropping extremely obvious hints that he is the Devil (See _The Sorrows of Satan's_ Lucio Ramanez)



* * *

**NPCs for the LOVE Scenario: Possible Beloveds**

Roll 1 d6 on each of the following charts to determine the character of the beloved, should the party not have already determined a figure fit for adoration:

**Descriptor:**

  1. Winsome
  2. Rakish
  3. Bookish
  4. Dandyish
  5. Sweet-Natured
  6. Scandalous



**Profession:**

  1. Duke/Duchess
  2. Actress/Actor
  3. Eccentric
  4. Spiritualist
  5. Adventurer/Adventress
  6. Scientist (Reroll on the Scientist Type Chart from Chapter 1 to determine what type!)



* * *

**NPCs for the FAME Scenario: Possible Influencers**

Roll 1 d6 on the following chart to determine the most socially influential person who might bring you to prominence should you play your cards right.

  1. A brilliantly eccentric polymath with over six doctoral degrees and recognized expertise in multiple fields (see _Dracula’s_ Abraham Van Helsing)
  2. A penniless and thoroughly debauched member of the aristocracy who has slept with at least two reviewers for every academic journal you might submit to
  3. The Queen herself, or at least a reasonable fictionalized version of her
  4. The man in charge of determining how exaggerated people’s burnsides are when they appear as caricatures in _Punch_
  5. A mysterious foreign agent who is part of a far-reaching international conspiracy to influence everything
  6. As per the possible patrons for the MONEY goal, the Devil is still about and willing to help you to fame as well as fortune (See _The Sorrows of Satan's_ Lucio Ramanez) 



* * *

**NPCS for the REVENGE Scenario: Possible Nemeses**

Roll 1 d6 on the following chart to determine the wretched nemesis upon which your vengeance shall fall.

  1. It’s a nemesis with MONEY! Roll on the MONEY NPC chart!
  2. It’s somebody’s ex! Roll on the LOVE NPC chart!
  3. It’s a nemesis with FAME! Roll on the FAME NPC Chart!
  4. It’s another scientist! Roll on the Scientist chart from Chapter 1!
  5. It’s an actual literary figure! Roll on the Scientist chart from Chapter 1 and select the mad scientist associated with the resulting Scientist Type!
  6. It is the God of your universe against which your researches are in stark rebellion--your nemesis is the Science Master General themselves! (Please proceed with caution and with the consent of all players present before beginning on a Man versus Storyteller session. Feel free to pick up a copy of West End Games's _Paranoia!_ if you feel you need inspiration.)



* * *

**ITEMS for the CHAOS Scenario: Possible Occasions for Disaster**

Roll 1 d6 on the following chart to determine things that might provide the opportunity for disaster:

  1. A very very very large display of explosives and incendiary chemicals
  2. An ancient hermetically sarcophagus that no mortal man has laid hands on for the past seven thousand years
  3. The zoological gardens entire menagerie of man-eating large cats and unfriendly serpents
  4. Lord George Gordon Byron (If you have determined that the year is eighteen-something-later-than-1824, see John Polidori’s _The Vampyre_ )
  5. A mob of uncomprehending rural villagers who do not particularly care for science
  6. All of the above




	4. Bibliography

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should players wish to familiarize themselves with the narratives upon which this game is based, below is a list of links to books that have been referred to in prior chapters. I have attempted to offer a brief summary and succinct evaluation of the madness and/or sadness of the science in each work.

**_Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley (1818) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42324)]:** The best known classic of sad/mad science! If you haven't read it, get prepared for a half dozen nested narratives that all explain how one man is very bad at making decisions.

 ** _The Vampyre_ by John Polidori (1819) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6087)]:** There is no science here, save that the book was written by a doctor, although said doctor was very very very sad.

 **"Rappacini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844) [[Full Text](https://web.archive.org/web/20030308190616/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=HawRapp.sgm&images=images%2Fmodeng&data=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fparsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1)]:** A tragic short story about the perils of treating your daughter like a plant; the science is very mad but takes a sad turn towards the end.

 ** _The Woman in White_ by Wilkie Collins (1859) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/583)]: **One of this century's top tier sensation novels, featuring intrigue, epistolary documents, and the hottest heroine ever to be routinely described as ugly; the closest thing to a scientist is one of the world's most delightful pieces of villainy who is neither mad nor sad about his myriad of terrible schemes; a good candidate for some "glad" science.

 ** _The Moonstone_ by Wilkie Collins (1868) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/155)]:** A scintillating piece of early detective fiction filled with issues of mesmerism, trance states, drugs, and quicksand; the science is of a fairly neutral (albeit dubious) character, but the scientist in chief is exceedingly sad for personal reasons.

 ** _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr._ Hyde (1886) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42)]: **You probably know what this is about, and it is a shame, as this would be a delightful novella to enjoy unspoiled; the science is very very mad and very very sad.

 ** _She_ by H. Rider Haggard (1887) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3155)]: **A story about never being able to escape your ex even across time and death; not a lot of science here as nobody does any rigorous peer-reviewed studies of the Pillar of Life that grants men immortality.

 ** _The Sorrows of Satan_ by Marie Correlli (1895) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42332)]:** It's _Faust_ for 1890s kids; there is not a terrible lot of science, as the only character with the intellectual capacity to do much science is Satan and he is busy damning souls; as per the title though, he is rather sad about it.

 ** _The Island of Dr._ _Moreau_ by H. G. Wells (1896) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/159)]:** A harrowing tale that cautions against manufacturing furries out of the unwilling; the science is very very very mad.

 **The _Beetle_ by Richard Marsh (1897) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5164)]:** A grotesque nightmare of nineteenth-century apprehensions as regard race, gender, and other things that made people afraid about Egypt; the villain is not a mad scientist at all; one of the heroes, however, is, and nobody seems to notice that they've teamed up with a vindictive dumpsterfire of a man trying to manufacture unstoppable death gas.

 ** _Dracula_ by Bram Stoker (1897) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345)]:** We all know this book, and we all know that it contains a vampire, but it's worth noting that it also contains a depressive, sedative-swigging psychiatrist weeping openly into his phonograph; sad science in abundance

 ** _The Invisible Man_ by H. G. Wells (1897) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5230)]:** Unlike the chipper, murderous prankster played by Claude Rains, the mad scientist in Wells' original is a misanthropic loner who is incapable of getting his life together enough to pay rent, let alone pull off his promised reign of terror; he's very angry about everything though, so the science is mad and sad by turns.

 ** _The Jewel of Seven Stars_ by Bram Stoker (1903) [[Full Text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3781)]:** Did you know that Bram Stoker also wrote a mummy book? Did you know that it involves a hydraulically-powered mummy resurrection chamber? Now you do! The science here is mad in the wackiest of ways.


End file.
